Chapter 48
forty-eight
The drive to the compound takes longer than normal thanks to the heavy flow of traffic.
I haven’t been back since the first time Matthias brought me here, and I miss it.
Mark’s smiling face greets me as I step out of the vehicle.
Vladimir, my driver and secondary guard, nods at me as I close the door to the SUV and leads me up the stairs that descend into the underground bunker.
He’s tall and largely muscled. The pristine white dress shirt he wears is stretched tightly over his chest, the seams straining at his broad shoulders.
I wait in silent anticipation for the buttons to suddenly burst off.
His accent is thick and deep, his skin covered in tattoos from the Cyrillic Russian letters on his knuckles to the ink scrawled up his neck.
Vladimir is one intimidating motherfucker, and if he weren’t on my side, I might have shit my pants when I first met him. No joke.
“I’ll wait here, Ma’am.” His w sounds like a soft v.
“Ava,” I correct him. The big man blushes, red creeping up his neck.
“Ava.”
Vas shoots me a disapproving look, but I simply wink at him and walk right past him into the somber darkness of the tunnels that run beneath the compound.
A lump of sadness threatens to emerge when my thoughts turn back to the last time I was here with Matthias.
We were a team then, taking down Elias’s port access and bringing his illicit dealings into the light.
We were in a bubble those few weeks—one that was later shattered by my perceived betrayal.
I want him to be here with me. To rule together, side by side. That was all I ever wanted from him. What a fairytale that was. A dream that will never be reached. A goal that can never be made.
There’s only me to lead now, and just the mere thought of that darkens the surrounding colors.
“You doing okay?” Mark asks hesitantly as we walk. I nod and turn to face him, a smile on my face that doesn’t quite reach far enough. Skepticism burns behind his eyes. He doesn’t believe me. “If you ever need anything—” He lets the invitation hang in the air between us.
“I know,” I assure him. “Thank you.”
He takes a deep breath and nods, accepting that I won’t be spilling my guts anytime soon. Emotions aren’t new to me, but growing up, I learned to limit them, hide them, lock them away so they can’t be used against me.
Show fear and they made me more afraid. Show pain and they reveled in increasing it tenfold. Rage was beaten out of me. Defiance was whipped from my body. Sadness was starved. Happiness barely existed enough for them to bother with.
Matthias was the first person I truly opened myself up to emotionally. He took them and shaped them into armor. Carved weapons from the very things that burned me, drowned me, and carved me into pieces.
“There she is,” Nikolai says, standing from his seat, a large toothy grin cracking his normally grumpy exterior. “Welcome back, Ma—Ava.”
The cold glare I give him stops the formalities dead in their tracks.
“Hello, Nikolai,” I beam back and take the chair he offers. “Maxim.” I nod at the burly Russian.
“Ava.”
“Let’s get started.” Vas inclines his head toward Mark. A moment later, the screens before us fill with the files Libby has been collecting on Persephone’s Web.
“So,” Mark begins, “I’ve been digging through these files for the last two hours and I’ve got to say—Libby was a fucking genius. Not only did she use Persephone’s servers to hide the files, but she also encrypted the hell out of them. The NSA and CIA would be proud.”
“I wonder who taught her how to do that?” I muse teasingly.
“Surely you don’t think I would teach her such naughty things?” Mark holds his hands up in a gesture of innocence, but the smirk on his face speaks volumes.
“Moving on,” Vas grunts.
Mark winks at me before turning back to the screen. Cheeky bastard.
“I was able to decrypt a good amount of them, but there are a few my program is still working through due to the amount of data stored within them,” he continues.
“From the size of the files, I’d favor a guess that they’re probably MP4s.
” He turns his gaze to Nikolai and Maksim.
“For the vintage models in the class, that means videos.”
“Fuck you,” Nikolai growls, throwing his pen as hard as he can at the hacker. Mark laughs and dances out of the way. “We’re not that old, you fucker.”
“Could have fooled me,” Vas murmurs.
I laugh, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes when Nikolai threatens to dismember Vas’s family jewels with a rusted spoon.
“Okay. Okay.” I wipe at my eyes. “What have you got from the ones that have been decrypted?”
Mark’s smile turns feral.
“Well, your instincts about your grandfather are spot on,” he tells me.
“Seamus McDonough has been a naughty senior citizen, and I’m not just talking about him running the Irish in Boston.
On top of the usual drug and weapon distribution, he’s invested huge sums of money in ground transportation companies over the last ten years secured by—”
“Knightman Security.”
“Exactly.” He nods. “Five points to Hufflepuff.”
There goes the beer I’m about to drink. Right out my nose and onto the polished wooden surface in front of me.
The room roars with laughter while I struggle to relearn how to breathe. Assholes. The lot of them. My stomach clenches and my chest aches as I join the raucous hysteria.
Times are hard. War looms on the horizon. We’ve suffered losses our hearts can barely cope with. Blood will be spilled on both sides, there’s no getting out of that, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy life while it lasts.
No one in this room can guess the outcome of our battle with Christian and the unseen puppet master pulling his strings. We can hope to come out on top, but there will never be a guarantee.
All we can do is pray to see the sunrise tomorrow while we watch the sunset tonight.
Taking these moments in is vital. Without hope and laughter, we’d be nothing more than zombies trudging through life. Broken. Dead. It’s the little things that keep us going—the smiles, the camaraderie, the beers, the jokes. Knowing you have a family to fight for. To survive for.
We all need someone or something to live for, and the men at this table are mine. Liam and the twins are mine. The need to see them survive is stronger than my thirst for revenge. I would sacrifice myself before sending them to die for me.
My gaze travels across their lit-up faces, and for the first time since meeting Matthias, I understand the weight he carried. These men, and the many others who followed him, were his responsibility. Someone’s son. Someone’s daughter. Parents. Family. People who wanted to go home each night.
Now, they are mine to protect.
“Settle down. Settle down,” Nikolai chuckles, tears streaming down his face as Vas attempts a horrific Harry Potter accent. My sides ache with laughter.
Still—on to business.
It takes another ten minutes before the overgrown children are ready to focus again. Another round of beer is handed out, and we get back to work. The breakdown fades like a distant memory.
“Most of the decrypted files involve finances,” Mark says. “It’ll take a few days to associate them with dealers and cargo, but it’s doable.”
“Did you find anything on Maleah?” My heart flips.
Mark’s lips turn down. “Nothing. If Elias kept a record of where she went, he didn’t list it outright.”
It was worth a try.
“I did find a reference to your sister.”
My brow furrows. “Libby?”
“No.” Mark swallows. “Kenzi.”
“Was it her tuition paid with drug money?” I sneer. “Because I couldn’t care less.”
“No,” Mark snaps. My gaze snaps up to meet his. His light eyes are swirling with barely contained irritation. They bore into mine, frigid and cold. “It said she was sold.”
“Impossible.” My lip curls. “Libby talked to her almost daily.”
“For how long?” Vas asks. Not him too. He can’t possibly be thinking that Elias sold her. Shooting and then blowing up my husband, then taunting me about it didn’t exactly scream CAPTIVE.
“I don’t know—five minutes maybe.” I throw up my hands exasperated. “Libby always said she sounded rushed. Said she was busy.”
“And that didn’t strike you as odd?” Maxim cuts in. Fucker is against me too. “Twin sisters who were hardly ever separated, always had time for each other no matter what, and suddenly one of them can’t find the time? That doesn’t sound odd to you?”
Of course, it did. I’m an idiot, but I chalked it up to Kenzi finally being free. Without Elias or Christian to dictate her every move, she found a chance at having a real life and I wouldn’t have blamed her for not wanting to be dragged into it again.
“If Elias sold her,” the sarcastic air quotes I put around that word should win an Oscar. “Then how did she end up an American Sniper?”
They exchange a look I don’t like. It is the kind of look that means they are holding something back. They know something about Kenzi and that pisses me the hell off.
“Someone start telling me what the fuck is going on,” I snap. “or I will empty every single bottle of alcohol here and in the penthouse, so help me God.”
Threatening to lop their heads off won’t get them talking as fast as they are about to. They know me too well. I don’t believe in the threat of death or dismemberment as proper motivation, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make their lives miserable, and they know it.
“Elias made a note,” Mark blurts. “I found the file under her social security number.”
“Okay…” Talk about drawing out the punch line
“Did you ever hear of the Chameleon Agency?” Nikolai asks from two chair down. He is dressed casually tonight in a pair of black jeans and a fitted black tee. Then again, it is normally Leon who dresses to the nines, even for something as simple as movie night.
I shake my head.
“They control more than seventy-five percent of human trafficking in the U.S.,” Maksim explains, leaning forward on his elbows.